Kier Darby

It was announced today that from 2012, broadcast rights for Formula One races will be shared between the current holder, BBC Sport, and Sky Sports. The BBC will show a selection of races live, including Monaco, Silverstone and the final race of the season, while Sky Sports (a premium rate pay-TV channel) will broadcast every single race. Twitter is fuming with rage over the announcement, and I felt compelled to make a formal complaint: As a license fee payer, I would like to make abundantly clear that I find the newly announced Formula One broadcast arrangements abhorrent. BBC Sport director Barbara Slater's 'delight' over the matter fills me with ire, as I know of not a single follower of F1 that will share her sentiments. This is a monumental betrayal of those that have supported the BBC and F1 in recent years, and an appalling slight to the BAFTA award-winning production team and presenters that have raised the sport to its current heights. No, broadcasting 's...

The Facebook Like  button is ever more prevalent, with countless uses all over the web, but many site administrators will want to control the way that 'Likes' for their sites appear on users' news feeds, in particular by specifying their own logo or graphic to accompany the story. In order to do this, Facebook requires that the 'Liked' page participate in the Open Graph , so that an Open Graph image can be specified. This is a relatively straight-forward affair, involving the addition of a collection of <meta> tags defining og: properties (which, annoyingly don't validate as compliant HTML, but that's another story), but there is one requirement that appears  to have been added after the initial roll-out, as pages that omitted it worked before and then suddenly stopped working. That requirement is for the specification of fb:app_id or fb:admins in order to provide administrative authority for your pages within the Open Graph. While fb:app_id (A...

For the most part I play badminton with bare feet. This may draw gasps of horror from some players, who question whether I end up with blisters and burns and twisted ankles, but I have never had any of those things. In fact, the last time I put my badminton shoes on, I quickly ended up with a sprained ankle due to the higher centre of gravity and less-stable platform provided by padded footwear. At the risk of stating the obvious, playing badminton barefoot is not the same as playing with shoes. It's not possible to simply plant a foot and rely on the mechanical grip of the sole to begin a change of direction. It's also imperative to keep legs flexed and weight forward so that contact with the floor is primarily through the forefoot, as landing on, or striking the floor with heels is not to be advised. A light step and swift footwork are required to move effectively around the court. While sliding and heavy landings are precluded, jumping and agility at the net are gre...

Google's new +1 Button normally mandates a somewhat cumbersome <g:plusone> tag, but this tag is not HTML compliant without a custom DTD, and worse, is unselectable by jQuery using normal selectors. Thankfully, they also provide an HTML 5 <div class="g-plusone"> option. While the <g:plusone> tag is configured with 'size' and 'url' attributes, in order to be HTML 5 compliant, the <div> version passes parameters using HTML 5's 'data-' attributes, such as 'data-size' and 'data-url'. Or at least, that's what the documentation says. In actual fact, the HTML 5 version ignores data- attributes, and responds only to normal, non-data attributes. I have put together a test case to illustrate the problem: Test case demonstrating the broken +1 HTML 5 implementation. Hopefully Google will address this quickly. Update, June 14 2011 The test case now renders correctly, indicating that Google has fixe...

As many people already know, I spend most of my life barefoot. I view shoes rather like gloves - sometimes they are necessary for warmth or protection, but most of the time they are redundant. I like the lightness, agility and freedom of bare feet, and the extra awareness of the environment that they provide. I wear shoes only when I absolutely must and even then, the footwear of choice tends to be cheap plastic flip-flops. Various people are very surprised when they learn that I rarely wear shoes when I go out. I am frequently asked if my feet aren't cold or if walking is not uncomfortable. The answer to both is negative. Americans in particular question whether it is even permitted to go barefoot, referring to the abundance of ' NSNSNS ' signs that adorn US establishments. Perhaps it's a difference in culture, but here in England I've only ever seen a written prohibition of bare feet in places where to be unshod would be genuinely dangerous. In this country, I...

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